counterattack by those being displaced, who reacted in confusion, desperation, or anger. The Elk Mountain Mission represents another instance of this conflict of cultures, though in this case the Indian resistance helped preserve for them their lands for another generation. Indian occupation of Grand County was facilitated by other events of the era-events that first occupied Mormon attention and later led to a change of Mormon policy. By the mid-1850s the Latterday Saints were facing a crisis that threatened their own existencethe so-called Utah War and advance of U.S. Army troops under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston to put down by force if necessary a supposed rebellion of the Mormons against American authority. That story is told elsewhere; in these pages it is necessary to mention it only as it affected the area of future Grand County. The Mormons retrenched in the face of the invading army, and it is possible that the missionaries at Elk Mountain would have been recalled to help defend the settlements even had things been going well for them. After that crisis cooled and U.S. Army troops were established at Camp Floyd in Cedar Valley, Brigham Young realized that the gentiles were going to be among the Mormons to stay and that an outer cordon of settlements and forts protecting the region would no longer be necessary. The problems would now be political and social, not military. Elk Mountain was not needed as an outpost; settlement of the territory could proceeed at a more natural pace, expanding gradually as necessary. For the time being there was plenty of available land much closer to church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Also, the Indians were angry-it must have seemed more desirable not to court trouble in the area. In fact, during the Black Hawk War of the mid- 1860s Mormons abandoned a number of their fledgling settlements in central Utah; southeastern Utah, including future Grand County, was in effect left for the time being to the Indians.
ENDNOTES 1. Dale L. Morgan, The State of Deseret (1987),p. 27. 2. See Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young: The Colonizer (1973), for a basic overview of Mormon colonization efforts. 3. Fred A. Conetah, A History of the Northern Ute People (1982), p. 42. 4. Deseret News, 2 1 December 1854.
